Chinese professors examining how WMU trains MBAs

April 1, 2002

KALAMAZOO -- The international renown of the Haworth College
of Business MBA program and the accomplishments of one of its
faculty have lured two Chinese scholars to Western Michigan University
for a two-month visit.

Professors Nie Fengying and Wei Xiu Fen arrived last month
to consult with accounting professor Dr. Roger Tang, the Pharmacia
Chair in Business Administration, and to observe American MBA
teaching methods. Nie and Wei are involved in planning one of
their nation's first agribusiness master's programs, which will
be taught in Beijing and Tianjin, China. The program is being
planned in cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural
Sciences and is sponsored by Winrock International, a nonprofit
organization that supports projects worldwide to increase economic
opportunity, sustain natural resources and protect the environment.

"WMU is very experienced in MBA education, and both Dr.
Tang and the University's program are famous in China,"
says Nie, who is an associate professor and deputy director of
the Department of Information Research at the Chinese Academy
of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing. "We have come here
to learn directly from Professor Tang and to observe the U.S.
teaching style. In the U.S., MBA classes are smaller and students
interact with the professor more than in China, where it's mostly
lecture format. In my country, we don't always have a lot of
case studies to share with our students. Here, the MBA students
not only learn the knowledge intellectually, but they also get
hands-on experience in how to handle real business problems."

Nei and Wei, who is an associate professor at Tianjin Agricultural
College, will also play host to Tang in June, when he visits
their cities to teach two management accounting courses in the
agribusiness program, which will be launched in May. During their
stay in Kalamazoo, the Chinese scholars will be working with
Tang to develop his course material.

"With the Chinese economy growing so quickly, there is
a great need for MBA graduates in that country, especially those
who are fluent in both English and Chinese and who understand
the differences in the cultures," says Tang, who was born
in China, educated in Taiwan and the United States, and who will
teach the courses in Chinese. "Some people estimate that
there's a demand for as many as 350,000 MBAs right now. That
may even be a low estimate. If you consider that there are more
than 100,000 foreign-owned enterprises operating in China right
now, and if each of them needed just three MBA-level executives,
that alone would account for the reported demand. Today, even
U.S. universities are producing only about 180,000 MBAs each
year, and China educates only a few thousand. The expansion over
the next decade will be huge."